Billie Eilish has shared an “I Love You” birthday message for her brother, Finneas, on his 26th birthday.
The “Happier Than Ever” singer celebrated her brother in an Instagram post on 31 July, which featured a photograph of them from their childhood. In the photo, young Finneas gazed at his baby sister and smiled as she slept on the pillow beside him.
Eilish, 21, wrote: “My best friend forever. Will never love anyone as much as I love you @finneas happy birthday you are the best thing I have.”
Aside from regular brother-sister duties, Eilish and Finneas have also supported each other professionally. The two Los Angeles-based artists co-created Eilish’s 2019 debut album -When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? - and her 2021 album, Happier Than Ever. Both albums reached number one on Billboard 200, and the two siblings have won a combined 14 Grammys and one Academy Award for their original James Bond theme song, “No Time To Die.”
Speaking to Zane Lowe on the Apple Music 1 podcast, Eilish admitted she had been feeling a heavy amount of self-doubt, leading to a period of writer’s block for herself and Finneas. However, the 10 July episode was published the same day that her self-directed music video for the track, “What Was I Made For?” was released. Eilish said their song for the Barbie soundtrack was motivated by Finneas.
“Finneas has always been the one that’s like, ‘No, no, no, let’s write. Let’s write.’ And honestly, we were in a period of time where we were both... like through this last winter, we’ve both been incredibly uninspired,” she told Lowe. “And we’ve still been working and trying to make stuff. And honestly, that song was the first thing we’d written in a minute.”
Eilish’s music video, with more than 20m views in two weeks, showed her dressed like the Mattel doll as she she hung miniature clothing on a tiny rack at her desk. Throughout the video, Eilish grappled with purpose and struggled to stay grounded through gusts of wind and rain.
During her interview with Lowe, she confessed to having a hard time writing exactly how she feels - which shines through in the lyrics for the emotional song. The lyrics read: “I don’t know how I feel, but I want to try.”
“I find it really hard to write about my exact feelings in my life, and so, ‘What Was I Made For’ would have never been written even though every single lyric is exactly how I feel,” she said.
Finneas - whose real name is Finneas Baird O'Connell - candidly spoke about the difference in his day-to-day life compared to Eilish’s and how living in the spotlight has affected them.
“Billie gets to play these arenas and whatever, but her day-to-day life is more challenging than mine,” he said during a 2022 interview with iHeartRadio’s Song Stories podcast. “My ability to walk down the street and go into a grocery store and sit at a coffee shop and whatever is uninhibited. Maybe a kid or two that day comes up to me and goes, ‘Hey, I love you,’ or something, but it’s not a challenge.”
Finneas said he aspires to reach as many listeners as possible through his music. At the same time, he understood it means that he would have to put himself in the spotlight as much as Eilish.
“The caveat is that I’m proud of my music. I want to promote it. I want it to be heard by as many people as possible. And if the consequence of that is that I become more famous, I’m willing to take that,” he remarked after noting that he’d like to “avoid” being famous like Eilish.
